With the increase in popularity of streaming platforms, it's very likely that documentaries have rarely been as popular as they are now.
Every new addition to Netflix, Amazon, and terrestrial TV almost becomes a pop-culture talking point, but if you're a subscriber to Sky and NOW TV, there are a host of brilliant documentaries that you may have missed.
FYI, for the purposes of this article, we're keeping it to strictly non-sporting titles for now but there are plenty of fantastic titles on offer.
if you're looking for an indicator of their quality, all of the following have been rated 95% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes.
Here are some of our favourite titles that are now available to watch on Sky and NOW TV.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Plot: Directed by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney (No Stone Unturned) and based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright, Going Clear profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology -whose most prominent adherents include A-list Hollywood celebrities-shining a light on how the church cultivates true believers, detailing their experiences and what they are willing to do in the name of religion.
The documentary highlights the Church's origins, from its roots in the mind of founder L. Ron Hubbard to its rise in popularity in Hollywood and beyond.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 95%
Four Little Girls
Plot: Spike Lee's first documentary is a simultaneously wrenching and provocative account of the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church that left four African American teenage girls dead and led to the Civil Rights movement.
Archival footage, interviews with family, friends, historians, politicians and newsmen tell the grim tale.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 100%
The Fog Of War
Plot: Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara is the sole focus of documentarian Errol Morris' documentary, a film that not only analyses McNamara's controversial decisions during the first half of the Vietnam War, but also his childhood upbringing, his education at Berkeley and Harvard, his involvement in World War II, and his later years as president of the World Bank.
Culling footage from almost 20 hours of interviews with the Secretary, Morris details key moments from McNamara's career, including the 1945 bombing of Tokyo, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and President Kennedy's suggestions to the Secretary that the U.S. remove itself from Vietnam.
Throughout the film, the 85-year-old McNamara expounds his philosophies on international conflict and shows regret and pride in equal measure for, respectively, his mistakes and accomplishments.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 96%
Project Nim
Plot: The documentary tells the story of Nim, a chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child.
Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 97%
Man On Wire
Plot: August 7, 1974. A young French man named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He danced on this wire for an hour with no safety net before he was arrested for what has become to be known as the "artistic crime of the century."
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 100%
Anvil: The Story Of Anvil
Plot: At the age of 14, Toronto school friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the "demigods of Canadian metal," releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's "Metal on Metal."
It went on to sell millions of records, but Anvil's career didn't flourish afterwards. Instead, they went straight to obscurity.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 98%
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
Plot: Spike Lee explores the U.S. government's response to the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina in this made-for-television documentary co-produced by HBO.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 97%
The Act of Killing
Plot: Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodelling cowboys.
Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.
When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders.
They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 95%
You can see all of these brilliant documentaries on Sky and NOW TV.
